I’ve missed a week or two.

Apart from escalators, the course workload has been steadily increasing, and I’ve had to keep up with both that and my internship at Fjord. I’m learning (and reading) a lot.

I’ve had a mental list of things to blog about, but I haven’t got ’round to it. I am, of course, keeping up with Twitter, as 140 characters don’t require much commitment, and it’s perfect for the bite-sized snacks of procrastination between essay points.

If I had more time, and wasn’t merely procrastinating from working on my doors essay, I’d write a nice long post including the points below, crafted into beautiful paragraphs. As it stands, you have to make do with bullet points. I’m sorry.

• Did you know doors are responsible for 300,000 injuries per year in the US? I didn’t. They are everywhere in the built environment, yet given hardly any thought — not much attention is paid to them even in the human factors and ergonomics field.
• An ergonomist will argue that “walking is a series of controlled falls”.
• Field studies, task analysis, physical ergonomics, usability evaluation methods, and the vast number of methods surrounding human-computer interaction design. Some of the things I’m learning about. This perfectly complements the graphic communication background from Reading. I am swinging between being relieved and contented with my design background, and being deeply envious of the cognitive psychologists.
• I’m working on a design project with the paraphrased theme: design something to make someone want to take a walk. It is fun. Navigating group dynamics is less fun.
• I think I’m going to take the option modules Affective Interaction and Organisational Informatics next term. I’m quite looking forward to Applied Cognitive Science. In a masochistic way.
• I don’t know what I’m going to do my MSc thesis on. I really don’t know. I don’t want to get over-excited about a topic that isn’t feasible.
• … I’m kinda tempted to do a PhD. (Uh oh.)
• If I did, I’d want to do the PhD in the US. Maybe.
• I am getting ahead of myself, as usual. But I am really happy.

Apart from that, I love London, and I’m just overwhelmed by everything there is to do. I have no time to do any of it!